The first week of January 2010, Apple called Bob Bowman with an invitation shrouded in even more mystery than usual: If you want in on our next project, send us your two best people. That’s all Bowman, president and CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, or BAM, had to go on. Losing two tech leads during the hectic months before Opening Day was risky. Worse, Apple wouldn’t be able to tell him what the techies were building, when its project would come out, or how long they’d be gone. But making the decision took Bowman “under 10 seconds.” Two years earlier, Apple had made a similar offer and MLB had struck gold with AtBat, its iPhone app. Bowman sent mobile developer Chad Evans and another engineer to Cupertino, California, the next day.

Even though I am not a baseball fan, it is nice to see a major sports organization embracing technology like the MLB is. As a fan, I wish that other sports organizations were as forward-thinking as BAM is. They are doing some incredible stuff. Things like this would probably make me start following baseball more if the Astros were not so terrible. Guess there are always the Tigers and Rangers.